You Can Take A College Course To Create ‘Game of Thrones’ Language

Tyrion Lannister's wine not included.

Photo: HBO

Winter is coming. Or in this case, summer.

As fans of Game Of Thrones know, subtitles can be exceptionally useful when watching the hit HBO show. Understanding what these people are saying — especially when they’re in the middle of sword fights, drunken debauchery and secret sexcipades that may or may not include heavy incest — can be hard to translate. Luckily for you, the inventor of the Dothraki and Valyrian languages is here to help you make your own GoT dialect that you’ll fully understand and will potentially confuse the hell out of your friends.

You Can Take A College Course To Learn Game of Thrones Language

Photo: Education Images/UIG (Getty).

David J. Peterson is a linguist responsible for creating various languages on the show, and he’s made himself available to teach a six-week summer course at Berkley in which students can create naturalistic language. The class is called “The Linguistics of Game of Thrones and the Art of Language Invention,” and Peterson touted it as some legit stuff I want to sign up for.

“Students are going to be learning how to create a naturalistic language,” he told Berkley News in a recent interview. “These are languages that attempt as nearly as possible to replicate the quirks and idiosyncrasies of natural languages, those that have evolved naturally on Earth.”

That’s dope. So can I make some intergalactic alien-talk, too?

“It’s not going to focus on the creation of alien languages, or auxiliary languages, or parody languages,” he added.

Well, damn.

Either way, still a cool concept. As many as 40 students can sign up for the class, and it starts May 22. At this point, it might be too late to sign up, but maybe they’ll accept drop-ins? If so, I can imagine what the first day of class will look like from Peterson’s perspective.